


What's New, Pussycat

by Xogoi_Momo



Series: Big Kitty Goth Boyfriend [2]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Kemonomimi, Bodyslams as Foreplay, Canon Het Relationship, Cat/Human Hybrids, Drugs, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Weird Comfort, Hybrids, It's Not Femdom if It's The Boss, It's a Russian Greeting, Kemonomimi, LITERALLY, Ocelot Family Feels, Period-Typical Sexism, Platonic Cuddling, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Team as Family, The Fury Is a Good Bro, Wrestling, background bosselot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-16 12:32:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17549738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xogoi_Momo/pseuds/Xogoi_Momo
Summary: A first-generation kemonomimi, a laboratory hybrid of man and ocelot, Tristan is tame compared to his wildcat of a son, but he has hidden depths.  So does the Fury.





	1. Big Cats Are Dangerous

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Precious Baby Kitten](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13510785) by [Not_You](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You). 



This supply run has gone more smoothly than the first one, which is an admittedly poor benchmark but still an accomplishment. Nobody back in the World was able to identify the least-identifiable members of the semi-fugitive Cobra Unit, or the semi-human specimen who's been kidnapped from an iron cage in a secret laboratory by his long-lost mother and cruelly forced to live in the wild with trees to climb and delicious birds. In the last case, the hat covering Adam's big spotted ocelot ears helps him keep a low profile, even if he's going to insist on dressing like a misplaced cowboy.

They arranged a shipping address during their previous trip to civilization, and that's allowed the Fury and the Pain, through the wonder of modern mail order, to do some of their own shopping. This means they don't have to explain heatproof hose fittings _very_ specifically to the Fear, or show their distinctive faces to store clerks who could remember them, for a price. There are other needs and wants for all of the Cobras that a shop can't be expected to have on hand, even in a bustling port town. Given their talents and their quirks and their general cussedness, some of those have had to be laundered through more than one mail service on the way.

There are boxes to unpack for everyone, then, and not just the big ones that Jack and Adam and the Fear have been using to haul groceries on and off the boat. There are also irregular cardboard boxes packed by strangers, stuffed with foreign newspapers and excelsior, sealed with tape and smelling of far-away. Tristan had said he didn't need anything when the Boss had asked him, signing a flurry of how happy he was to have her and Adam as well as all his new friends. That had naturally turned into kissing and purring and some of his quiet, effortless tears when she reciprocated in her more hands-on way. 

Afterwards, she still made sure that their order-out list had more of the big bulky pencils, the ones that are made for teaching toddlers to write and that Tristan will never not need, as well as enough paper that his careful thoughts can stick around and not have to be wiped off the chalkboard when he has something new to report.

ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

When the Boss had found her cat-man again--when they had found each other again, she had been afraid, in the surprise of that frozen moment. What had become of the gentle and sweet captive she'd fallen in love with, left alone to fend for himself in the savage environs of his ancestral species? They had had a long talk, a talk-write-sign-and-hug that was mediated--unnecessarily, as it turned out--by the End. Tristan had explained that when he'd thought she was dead (and she, in a hospital bed across the globe, had read convincing reports of his autopsy) he'd lost heart and lost his control of the spirits. The dead that only he can see, the dead that he urges her not to worry about, had joined him in grief and anger and rent Tristan's flesh with the claws he'd been so careful to keep from hurting anyone else.

The Boss found that action tactically nonproductive, but at the same time she grieved it as deeply, personally tragic; she was used to managing two sets of feelings like that and still staying on her feet. After that slip, though, her brave little ocelot had rallied. He'd been shipped off in a crate like a piece of decommissioned equipment and given about as much official attention since. In all the years after that, so terribly alone, he hadn't gone feral and he hadn't curled up to starve, or walked into the hands of Men to be skinned or sold.

She couldn't imagine it. Then she'd watched Tristan--her timid Tristan who couldn't even bear to hold her to the unforgiving ground when she asked him for a sparring match back in his cage--handle the peccary she'd spotted out in the bush. Before she could switch from binoculars to her rifle sight, he'd bounded ahead on his lady's errand and torn out its throat with the same paws that spent hours learning to form the letters of her name.

Tristan had returned to her with his arms laden with warm, dripping meat, matting the ocelot fur all the way up his wrists and forearms. He'd been giving her the same sweet smile he's always had when he hopes his offering will suffice, although now there were blood flecks on the cat's whiskers that time had grown on his open, all-too-human face. It's the same look he gives her on his return from another family hunting expedition, this one a father-son trip with Adam. 

Their son looks so _normal,_ if you can overlook the tail. Even with a mother's love, Adam looks exactly like any wet-behind-the-ears Second Lieutenant, with the sneering hubris of youth that's crying out to be humbled by combat, especially if he won't listen to a veteran beforehand. His eyes have his father's oval pupils, but the Boss recognizes her own steely gaze mirrored back at her; Adam didn't, wouldn't hesitate to kill. They both know a human isn't much different than a tapir, if he's a threat or if you need to eat.

Her two cat-men set down the sturdy branch they've used to carry dinner home on, leaving tapir butchery for the Fury and maybe the Fear, if he's interested in the claws. They both stretch out their flexible ocelot spines in unconscious unison, until Adam walks off across the camp on two legs, looking for Jack, and Tristan jumps up to balance on the nearest tree limb, so he can better lick the drying blood out from between his fuzzy paw-toes.

ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

The Boss gives her unit space for mail call. Her reasoning is that unpacking it at a leisurely pace, barring rain, will allow each man the opportunity to squirrel away anything that was ordered as a _personal_ comfort. She assumes, and does not care, that some of the boxes are full of liquor and stroke books rather than beans and bullets and beekeeping supplies. It could be a mixture; the Pain is more than dedicated to his craft. Everyone here has bled for his own understanding of the Mission, but there are still human needs to contend with, not the least of which is maintaining the delicate balance of privacy in a communal setting.

There's a box somewhere in there of what people euphemistically call "ladies' needs," but the Boss has been in company that dared to snicker, and explained the supplies' function at length and without blushing--on her part, anyway. Her handpicked Cobras aren't so squeamish; they've been grateful for any sterile wound packing in an emergency, no matter the strings attached.

There should also be a small package from Rimmel, hopefully stuffed in the middle of a crate so it's not melted by the sun. The Boss knows her unit and their honor: everything she's ordered will be safe until the dust has settled and she comes by to claim her own, but shipping and handling by outside contractors is another matter. (The Fear may well investigate her cosmetics, but only as far as checking the packing list against his own order; they both know he has more sallow tones in his palette.)

With the responsibilities of command on hold, the Boss plans to spend part of her own day lollygagging on the beach, getting warm and golden in the sun. She seldom has trouble taking any of her plans into action, but it's difficult to leave this center of activity.

Adam has had movies and television to educate him, long before he left on the first shopping trip of his life, but her Tristan has lived in a concrete bunker and then in the jungle. Until now, he's only had the stories that his collection of ghosts have told him about how the rest of the world gets along. Tristan is understandably intrigued, then, by the unpacking and everything that it reveals. The Boss could say something about cats and curiosity, but those comparisons seem unfair to her man. His big RADAR-dish ears are pricked up, and his rosetted tail lashes in a slow holding pattern, but the way he leans in and cocks his head over the contents of an opened box reminds the Boss of scientists and data analysts. She could place him as one of the ones who thank her effusively for her contribution before their fully-human attentions are consumed by a bloodied sheaf of papers or a lightly-detonated electronic assembly. Tristan's wearing the reading glasses the Fear picked out for him last time, and if he had a clipboard and somewhere to put a pocket protector, the Boss thinks he could fit in just fine back at the lab, but on the other side of the bars.

The Fury, in the full spirit of fraternity, has delegated his own crate-opening to Tristan, whose paw-hands are dexterous enough to let him use a crowbar like his human friends, and every bit as strong. Once the lid of the crate is pried off, Tristan makes the deep chirping noise that sounds exactly like a question mark, and the Fury leans in to tell him how this empty metal box is going to let them "have cooking fire? Become cooking _oven."_

Tristan came to this continent in a very similar crate, and the Boss knows that he remembers how the nails screeched when they were pried out, all around his big spotted ears. He's told her about that, when they were alone together and she could hold him steady in her arms. She also knows, because he's hers, that Tristan is always a little bit in two places at once. Right now, he's imagining golden-brown bread just like the Fury has told him to, but she knows Tristan's sadness is there just out of reach, in the memory of the waves lapping around his darkened crate.

Surrounded by another pile of newspaper packing material, Adam wads up a snowball of Portuguese headlines and throws it at his father, with commendable aim and follow-through. Of course, Tristan catches it on instinct before it hits him in the head, and the paper crinkles in his big furry hands like his face crinkles into a smile, whiskers, eyes and all. Even the Fury laughs, a short and ugly sound, as he relieves Tristan of the crowbar for a proper father-and-son roughhouse that's also two cats in a sea of boxes and shredded paper.

The Boss knows when she's reconciled that as much as she can for an afternoon. It's all good training, anyway; she leaves them to it and heads out for the flat riverbank nearby with her straw mat and her tanning oil, secure in her observation that all is as it should be, if you make the usual allowances.

ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

Tristan's little fugues and his easy tears don't mean weakness, not the same as if she were to cry. Without a voice--with a voice, but no words--the human experience has to come out of him somehow. Sometimes they're tears of joy, and being mute doesn't mean he doesn't appreciate that wordplay. He appreciates it even more when the pun doesn't come from the Pain, just them alone together in their good-as-marital bed. Sometimes she's just too strong, too much, and he's always her brave little soldier, even when it's the kind of too much that isn't from his unshakable devotion to her, but a too much _like_ something from _before._ _Before_ was when things were done to his body on a schedule, not even out of cruelty but out of indifference, and adherence to a standard checksheet in aniline purple ink.

In the research facility he swallowed his inconvenient pride and surrendered his body on a daily basis, all the worse because he could never completely dissociate himself from the indignities of the physical world. He's told her before, and she fully believes, that there are malign spirits out there--all right, Tristan, just confused and angry and scared--waiting unseen for the surrender of a body with a built-in ghost conduit.

Here in the World, his own man at last, he beams with pride to give himself to her, on purpose. If it's a sacrifice, it's heartfelt and willing, as he offers the meager gift of his body on her stern, eternal altar.

The frilly stuff is a direct quote, and one that he took pains to write down all the letters of, so he's probably happy enough with the phrasing that the scrap of paper is squirreled away for his next love poem. The Boss never much appreciated poetry back in school, but she has to admit it's different when it's about you, a series of odes your long-lost lover has been scratching into tree bark for the last twenty years. Now that she's privileged to read the tributes that he had thought were eulogies, she especially likes that Tristan naturally kept a good 30:70 ratio of comparing her loveliness to Helen's vs. comparing her might to Agamemnon. How well her poet knows his muse.

There's room for poetry in her life now, even if Tristan has been returned to her not by anything silly like their intertwined souls, but by two groups of people who had similar ideas about where to hide a fugitive science project. The overgrown wild to vanish into and local legends of cat-men in the twilight overlap nicely in the geographic source of her husband and son's ocelot genes. The only strategic weakness is that a third party, given time, could draw the same conclusions.

The Boss isn't worried. The forces who are trying to put Adam (and Tristan, if they had any idea he were also alive) back in a cage won't remember to incorporate pleasant scenery and good relations with the neighbors into their equations. If they still manage to locate the Cobra Unit, fine; they're all ready to fight. Eager for it; the Boss admits that's one of her weaknesses, but it's one that her men share, so it's not a problem for morale.

She's loved Adam since he was a twinkle in her eye and an uncomfortable pressure on her bladder, but there's a special place in her heart for how she found him on their getaway boat, with an unselfconscious smile on his face and an enemy dying in his bloody hands. The Boss has practiced CQC in front of a mirror, to perfect her form, so what she saw below-decks that night was a familiar sight. Literally familiar, with the difference of two little glints of fang in his smile and a tail that finished the job of betraying his youthful enthusiasm.

Her Tristan isn't wired the same way they are, and it isn't just the ghosts. She remembers seeing him again, held in Adam's claws, and the look on Tristan's face before he spotted her was of pained acceptance, not submission to anything but the world. Knowing what she knows now, Tristan has been spending their years apart staying ready for his death. He was surprised by how it came, glad to see their son again, and trying not to be too eager to meet her at the end of some golden tunnel. He's told her, in private, how he worries that wherever they're going, it won't be together. 

The Boss knows she has to be dripping in blood in whatever metaphysical sense applies, but while she has the occasional regret over her applied pragmatism, in service of her country and her mission, Tristan looks at her and sees only honor and devotion. She remembers vaguely that there's a Norse battle-goddess whose chariot is pulled by cats; she could imagine Tristan on a motorcycle, his ears crammed into a helmet and his night vision on the road, all so she could better man the minigun from their sidecar.

Always the tactician, she has more intimate ideas she'd like to try, too, but a commander keeps in mind her troops' limitations. There can be rewards for breaking through his wall of memory, but she still has to remind Tristan to _tell_ her, in the dark and through his gasps and purrs, when it's more than just her presence making him tremble.

"This is mine," she reminds him of the here-and-now, as she takes a firm hold of his most obvious sign of interest. The Boss knows he's ashamed of it, and irrationally so: what Tristan offers up for her is a perfectly reasonable, mostly-human dick, a bit more streamlined at the tip and with some fascinating nubbly almost-spines closer to the base. The Boss enjoys challenges like that. The look in his grey-blue eyes, as she squeezes him fondly, is a deep blend of absolute terror and unquestioning acceptance. That might be another reason she's had idle thoughts of Tristan and the Fear, beyond their shared acrobatic abilities. 

"This is mine, but I appreciate you taking care of it for me," the Boss says again, and smiles. Her own teeth are purely human, but they don't need to be anything else. Tristan shivers once, through his whole body; it's a spasm that overlays the continuing purr. 

Some men hold back so they won't hurt a weak and feeble woman. Tristan holds back, too, but his original fear was prudent. His body is stronger than hers is. Hell, maybe his willpower is, too; the Boss couldn't put up with a quarter of the shit Tristan has and still smile so sweetly. Even from the beginning, nobody suggested sending her out as a charm agent.

As if that weren't enough, the fear of his natural strength was drilled into him, years of being told he mustn't harm the humans that led up to deep and painful confusion when his handlers tried to make him fight. He was an early wash-out of combat training, and his masters were disappointed at how good a job they'd done plotting that first trajectory. Her cat-man has been unjustly treated, and his only real weakness is that he still, at heart, wants to make people happy. 

Luckily, the Boss is here at last, and she can give him a smaller target to hit: her, only her approval, and damn the rest of the ungrateful world for her man. She knows he enjoys a little direction, and he proves it with how eagerly he follows her hand as she guides him right down to her cunt where they both know he belongs. He'd eat her out all day if she commanded him to. The Boss snorts; even she falls into the trap of underestimating her quiet, stoic cat. As willing as he is for her, Tristan still has his agency.

He'd eat her out all day if she let him, the nictitating membranes whiting out his eyes in a dead giveaway when she lets him up for air. What's on their agenda for tomorrow, again?

ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

The Boss knows that nature isn't quiet, no matter what travel writers tell you. That's not a bad thing, just an inaccuracy; the soundscape out here isn't the same as being surrounded by the grating, irregular human activity of a military base or a safehouse by the railroad tracks. The birds and the bugs and the skittering things are in low, constant discussion; the river is a steady white noise. In nature, everything goes about its business with the minimum of fuss; the Boss appreciates that. On this day of no schedule, it makes it easy to relax, stretch out and soak up the sun; the animals aren't her comrades, but she knows that they'll react first, in perfect self-interest. If it _does_ get suddenly quiet, she'll be ready, too.

Or if it suddenly gets loud. The Boss is a warm puddle of slowly-browning sinew when she hears stomping through the forest. The undergrowth rustles with the passing of a very large human, one who is not currently concerned with stealth, so she adds in the faint buzzing she hears and makes the math come out to the Pain. With this approach, his reason to disturb her is either trivial or apocalyptically bad, and she hasn't heard any aerial bombardment.

The Boss allows her men privacy and appreciates it for herself in turn, but there's no time to be precious about your modesty in an emergency, which the Pain has clearly decided this is. She's watched everyone's back while they took a leak behind enemy lines, and appreciated the favor returned, so she sits up and ties her hair back first, instead of wasting time.

"Boss, I fucked up! I really fucked up. I thought it'd be _funny,"_ he tells her, out of breath and only briefly checking in on on her nipples. 

From their long working relationship, the Boss knows the Pain's tells. This unknown fuckup sounds medium-bad, something past "our hotwired _Sturmpanzer_ is choking because there's a brand-new hornet nest in the air intake" bad but not "Boss I led Philosopher operatives back to the camp" bad. 

She knows the Pain likes practical jokes, but he's usually careful with his targets. The Fury has no compunction about giving back as good as he gets, although his technique is more practical than joking. The End enjoys watching mischief, even from nominal adults; they must all seem like children from his advanced age. The Fear has some other nuance he's puzzling out with the Pain, and the Boss is content to let them keep working on it between themselves, unless that's the trouble today.

A straight answer would be better than the best deduction, but just as soon as the Boss takes in a breath to speak, the Pain looks even more stricken and leaps away, vanishing in a swirling cloud of dust and hornets. This is not an unusual occurrence in itself, although it's disappointing that he'd rather run than face whatever situation he's caused.

Regardless, she's the Boss, and this is how the chain of command works. If there's something her men can't take care of, it's up to her to deal with it, however stupid and self-inflicted it's likely to end up being. She shakes out the sand and rolls up her woven mat, and has gotten as far as buttoning her shirt when Adam comes to find her next. 

"Oh, good," he greets her, shortly after the rustling footfalls and twig-snaps of a silent hunter who's trying to telegraph his approach. Adam's careful not to stalk up on his mother out of a general sense of politeness and filial piety. There's some self-preservation in the decision, too; although he'd never admit that, a mother knows these things.

"It's Dad; he's OK, but we need you back at camp." He's fixing his mop of hair with his fingers, looking somewhat concerned but mostly embarrassed, which is another common occurrence since he's a teenager who is also a cat and also newly in love. Adam reaches out and takes her kit from her arms, a dutiful and well-mannered son. In further concession to his long-lost mother, they trek back through the forest together, with Adam only occasionally glancing up at the branches he could be leaping from. 

"The Pain was looking through his packages, and along with the bee shit, I guess he thought it'd be cute to get a bag of catnip mice. The kind for _house_ cats." Her son gives good briefing: start with the important basics and threat level, then move into detailed background. The Boss sighs and pops her neck; might as well use the walk to get ready for the mess she's going to have to clean up.

"They had catnip tea back at the lab," Adam continues. "It was a reward for good behavior. I never got any." He doesn't have to take her through the logical steps there, but she can tell he'd just love to answer questions about the specifics. There's a disciplinary file in a different institution with her old name on it, too; with her son at her side, she'll burn it all down, some day. "They must not have had it at all, back when Dad was in."

And that's another truth; the Boss had read Tristan's records, back when he was 0051 and she was a comparison shopper thumbing between _Felinae_ and _Pantherinae._ Quiet, easy demeanor but a little high-strung, limited in his useful applications but very, very obedient; she can picture Tristan as even more of an ascetic, with his big soft hands careful around a scuffed tin cup. _He_ could have earned the elusive merit point for ladylike deportment at table. Her ocelot-eared mystic, sitting there gaunt in his institutional pajamas, smiling his little spirit-haunted smile but too far away in his other world to notice her arrival at all.

"...so he started off drunk, but now I think he's high, and it might be a bad trip. Or it could be a ghost thing, too. The Pain wouldn't let me try any, even before Dad got weird."

The Boss appreciates good, reliable intel; even if she doesn't agree with certain implications, she now has solid data from which to extrapolate. She fixes Adam's hair herself before dismissing him, her son literally high-tailing it off into the forest with her canteen flapping on its strap behind him.

ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tristan is, of course, the Sorrow; the Boss gave him a real-people name after discovering he only had a serial number and a self-given nickname. although that nickname would have fit in _great_ with her SpecOps unit, if only...
> 
> This story was intended to turn out a lot smuttier than it did; again, my apologies.


	2. But a Little Pussy Never Hurt Anyone

Back at the Cobras' semi-permanent camp near the waterfall, there's a big clearing that's been refined by machete and by a half-dozen pairs of boots stomping around every day. It started out as the mess and primary fire pit, but it's become their gathering place through unspoken agreement. The empty crates from the supply run are piled at the perimeter, and as much as the Boss knows that the Fury yearns to introduce the entire world to the cleansing gift of flame, he hasn't even suggested such a wasteful use for their windfall of straight, machine-planed boards. Her Cobra Unit are trained professionals, even if they're following their true passions under her, not the certifications that are filed somewhere with government names printed on them.

It's quiet in camp, and the Boss isn't stupid enough to let her guard down. If the Pain were here, not off sulking in his swarm of hornets , he'd be the first to grin and agree that it's _"too_ quiet," even though he knows that nobody ever appreciates that anti-joke. That's enough to remind her why she had to cut her beach day short.

Tristan is her priority. Tooth, claw and all, he's still her endangered asset, but of course she's ready for the Fear when he intercepts her first. 

At the edge of the clearing, her spider soldier moves quietly to his commander and hands her a pair of reading glasses he's been holding by the temple. The Fear was the one who bought them on their previous trip to town, using whatever the hell elderly simpatico he has going with the End to accurately guess Tristan's prescription, and securing enough backup pairs to hedge his bets. Tristan had been ecstatic, and the Boss had watched him thank the Fear twice. The first time was for the precious gift of being remembered; the second was later, for how correct the Fear was. He'd guessed that Tristan's reading speed had little to do with being a grade-school dropout or, as Tristan puts it and the Boss hates, a _dumm Cat._

The Fear's being careful, like he is with a spider or the fletching on a dart, but the reading glasses have already been smudged by their wearer; there's a faint pattern of fur visible on the lens. Tristan can clean his own treasured glasses just fine, but having big soft paw-fingers makes it easy to smear them in the first place. Let him have a cloth and the luxury of time, and they'll be back to rights. He's got a cat's instinctive pride in keeping himself and his gear spotless; the Boss has watched her man purr quietly to himself, the fur on his arms wet to the elbow as he pitches in to scrub the dishes and pans. That cheerfulness helps her ignore the other reason for it, that Tristan was raised in a cell and physically reminded to keep everything _just so._ It's different from what she's trained men to do, what she's been training Jack to do; the Boss has never kept anyone from child- or kittenhood. She's never tried to beat the joy of play out of anyone, although the Pain could do with a little of that, later.

The Fear sighs in front of her, and doesn't pretend ignorance as she takes Tristan's glasses and folds them up into her breast pocket, ready for for the briefing.

"I guess Pain ordered catnip mice, Boss, along with all the other gear. Tristan was helping unpack, asking questions about everything, and Pain just went ahead and handed him a few.” None of her men are snitches, and she can tell it chafes on the Fear to have to report on anyone. On the Pain especially, she guesses, but that's also for later. 

"Yarn and rabbit fur or something, and you're probably not supposed to _eat_ them, but they're for little pet cats, and he definitely chewed them first. Listen, I'm not an asshole, but you know how cats get."

"Let's say I don't," she says. The Boss is not in the mood for conversational mercies.

"Fuck," the Fear agrees; he's already too far in. "So he was like a cherry recruit getting loaded for the first time. At first he was getting loose and whipping that tail back and forth, and then he grabbed the whole bag from Pain and was just purring and drooling and chewing up those toy mice. I had Jack try to take the bag off of him, or take Tristan off Pain, either one, and all that got was Jack drooled on and chewed up a little too. Your guy's _strong_ when he wants to be."

The Boss glances over at the table, where her protégé is sitting across from the End: there's no obvious bleeding, and Jack always looks a bit dumbfounded, so he's fine. While she's doing her long-distance triage, Adam appears silently from the brush and alights next to Jack, which gives him something more concrete to deal with. Good.

"So he was three sheets to the wind and grinning like he'd be buying everyone a drink, and then he started weaving around and chasing invisible bugs. And then--" The Fear snaps his fingers and opens his own strange eyes wide, the wrong color but the same startled effect. 

"Stock still, hair standing up, nothing but his eyes moving. Minutes of that, and he didn't snap out of it, either. When he finally did anything, he just started hunkering down and making this awful _noise_ in the back of his throat, like he had his leg caught in a trap. That's when the kid left to get you, and about when Pain took off too. Probably to try to beat Adam getting to you, or else go hide in the woods. Probably both. Listen, it's Fury who deserves a medal, Boss. First, he didn't do shit to Pain--" 

She grunts. It's a complicated editorial stance to read: the Fear agrees that the Pain deserves to Receive the Flame, at least a little; the Fear is glad, on a personal level, that the Pain escaped with only a guilty conscience; the Fear knows all about this discrepancy in his worldview and the hornets, bless their tiny arthropod souls, are blameless. The Boss agrees with that; it's not the hornets' fault that their mammalian queen is an idiot.

"Fury really took one for the team, Boss. He was staying out of fun times, like usual, until Tristan started... doing that, and then he just stomped over, reached out his arms and said _'Koshka, it is time for kisses.'"_

The Fear shrugs. His impression of the Fury is passable, but this time it's _sotto voce;_ the Boss gathers that the man himself is still near, and still furious.

"After that, Tristan was _on_ him. Even fucked up, I guess everybody knows an opening like that doesn't come along often."

ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

The End has been monitoring the afternoon's proceedings in a sniper's way: non-interventional, until it's necessary. It's also an old man's way, loath to get up from the seat where he's been sorting the job offers that have arrived with the mail. There's more than government work available in their field, and plenty of prospective employers don't mind at all that the infamous Cobra Unit have joined their leader on her belated maternity leave.

No one should be surprised that they intend to keep a hand in the game. All these years, the Boss has wanted to build a better world for her stolen son to inhabit, one where he'd never be made to fight. Then she finally met, and spent time getting to know, Adam, and only an idiot doesn't adjust her plan when it's overcome by events. The Boss' new vision is a world where Adam can pick who and why he fights, but even so, she's still his mother. She won't let him go into the family business without hands-on training, and the best backup behind him--and isn't that part of a family business, to be side-by-side with your children, putting in an honest day's work _together?_

She still wants a world where other mothers' babies can choose peace or war of their own free will, though, and one where her Tristan, alive after all, is never forced to bring the claws out of his soft, careful paw-hands. 

The End meets the Boss' eyes, nods and almost imperceptibly moves a finger, directing her over to the pile of partially deconstructed shipping crates. Those planks will make a much better table some day soon, flat enough that a steel cup of morning coffee won't slide off, even if the owner isn't awake enough to watch it. For now, the End is using a crack in their tree trunk table to sort coded envelopes, and as the Boss watches the shipping crates, there's the tip of a black-and-gold tail flicking in and out of view behind them.

ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

It's rare that she catches Tristan unawares. If she believes what he tells her--and she does-- she's leading an invisible army everywhere she goes, a platoon of clear-purposed ghost soldiers whom she recognizes from Tristan's descriptions. Behind them are other spirits who don't even remember themselves, just the constants of service, duty, and of her. (From that verbatim phrase, and the emphasis he uses, she has an idea that Tristan would be proud to join those ranks in a moment. It's a sweet sentiment, but there's still too much work to be done in this life.) Old habits die hard in her spirit legion; the ghostly scouts precede her troops, and thus the one man with eyes to see, _her_ man, is always pleased but seldom surprised by her arrival.

Today looks like one of those exceptions.

The Fury is surrounded by packing material, all of it deliciously flammable, and he's still the only one who notices her approach. They're sitting like two lovers, Tristan wrapped loose and lissome around the Fury, who's his usual upright column of knotted tissue. With his back to her, Tristan's pale hair hanging to his hypothetical collar, it completes the snapshot of a clandestine courtship; Tristan is forehead-rubbing, nosing and licking the Fury's scarred-up head and neck, as variously reachable, while he's kneading vigorously at the Fury's chest like the cosmonaut is the Hero of the Beach. The purring is audible from yards away, and as the Boss approaches she hears the manic force of it, a liquid, guttural harmony. There's a faint crinkling noise, too, like a cellophane bag somewhere between their bodies. 

The Fury looks up at the Boss, and there's terror in his eyes, but it's not as though she's come home early and caught the mailman in her bedroom. The Boss remembers what the Fury looked like _before,_ and his usual expression is no less haughty now without eyebrows, and with so much less of a nose to look down. Taking off the space helmet didn't cool his eponymous temper either, just lowered his body heat in a concession to the tropics. He's still holding a grudge against the entire world for not being in flames.

Right now the Fury isn't worried what people will think of him for jumping on Tristan like a stripey grenade; he's confused as to what to think of himself. The Boss knows Tristan's hands intimately, his strong almost-paws with upholstered palms and fingers, the short fur like velvet around those warm pads. Tristan gives good, comprehensive cuddle; the Fury is awkward with physical contact at the best of times. The Boss is also certain that if you asked the Fury, "the best of times" would be when he's pushing someone away and into optimal flamethrower range. He's even further out of his depth amidst the purring and Tristan's honest affection for him, catnip bender notwithstanding. Being drunkenly made out with might be easier to tolerate than being thoroughly scent-marked, as befits someone's good, beloved, _treasured_ friend. 

It's hard to hate the world when it doesn't hate you back.

The Boss just sighs. "I appreciate your sacrifice," she tells the Fury. This message is received as earnestly as it was sent, by two different parties. Her pyrotechnician still has eyelids, and he closes them, relieved to be relieved. Her beloved day-drunk cat-man does the opposite, twisting himself around in the Fury's arms in a way that would be impossible for a standard-issue human spine and signing something fervent and sloppy with _Boss_ and _return_ and _love_ in it.

She knows that she should maintain a stern countenance, in recognition of the Pain's betrayal of their band of brothers or at least his miscellaneous dumbshittery, but if the Boss has a weakness beyond her dedication to duty, it's Tristan and his smile. That smile is more lopsided and goony than it's been in a long time; Tristan's eyes are huge and glassy-bright like shooter marbles, and there's a thick strand of Day-Glo yarn drooping out of his mouth like someone was trying to crochet an ocelot doll and gave up on working in the ends. He's still absently chewing on the rest of it, too.

"Spit that out," she tells him sharply, and puts out her hand. The love of her life is sitting in front of her but some things are just reflex, even if her old employers did their best to keep fresh recruits out of the Boss' sight, for turnover's sake. Tristan has had a lifetime of reflexes learned at the other end of command, but right now he only has the focus for one thing at a time. The Boss knows from observation and not hubris that, ghost army or no ghost army, if she's around, Tristan's eyes are on her.

Tristan does drop the crinkly cellophane bag of stuffed mice and even more extra catnip, pieces of dried leaf flaking from scattered fang-holes. Maybe it's just forgotten, falling into the Fury's newly-empty lap as Tristan turns and leaps toward her in an anatomically-improbable way. He's beautiful in motion like that; hunting is when he shows off the wildcat suspension that's been hidden in a human chassis. The Boss will admit it: she's acting like a speeding driver who's too awed by the speed of the unmarked prowler to do anything but be run down when it flashes its lights.

Of course, the Boss isn't a poet. Poets do disadvantageous things like standing still when there's a half-crazed ocelot-man pouncing on you with a look in his grey-blue eyes like something out of _The Island of Dr. Moreau,_ or a white-haired caricature of Rasputin, with kitty whiskers.

The Boss doesn't waste another second on thinking; she takes his impact as it comes, hits the ground on her fourth point of contact, and then she's right back up again, bullying his skinny body in front of her against a delicious resistance. The grin on her own face comes naturally, same as her other code name, and it's a joy to finally be on the other end of _all_ of Tristan's jungle-trained power.

"It's a date," she says, and snorts what's probably blood right back up her nose. If this were the serious kind of fight, she'd head-butt him, but there's more than one way to get your heart pounding. She lunges in for a kiss instead, and it's all the sweeter that she's clicking her human-standard canines against Tristan's pointed ones, until she can tug the remains of a chewed-up toy mouse from her man's mouth, which tastes like him, hot and wet, overlaid with steeping herbs.

The Boss flings her prize away with a flourish of her neck, and if she saw her own face, she's sure it'd be as transfigured with the joy of battle as Tristan's is by dope and ghosts. He's in her arms now, breathing heavily and still purring. Tristan is thin but not gaunt; he's _wiry,_ muscle over bone, and over that his furry golden-and-black patches of stripes, spots and rosettes are still the softest thing she's ever felt.

She looks deep into his eyes, and he into hers. For a long moment they're lost together, catching breath to the exact same rhythm, two warm and sweaty bodies under the equatorial sun. The Boss is a professional, however, and can hide her tells right up until the split second she goes from doe-eyes to converting their clinch into a double-leg takedown, dropping Tristan to the soft ground below her and straddling his waist.

He lets out a short chirp and looks surprised, but it's the good, Christmas kind of surprised. She knows he likes her body above him, the security of having that strength he's afraid of be directed and controlled by someone he trusts more than himself.

"Jesus Christ, Boss. Get a room," the Fear says, fondly; the rest of the Cobra Unit, except for the absent Pain, haven't moved from their positions. 

He'll have to do for a spokesman. Adam's torn between fascination and the horror that these two people are his parents; Jack is too busy observing, and almost audibly thinking, to remember that his physical body exists in the present moment. The Fury has been hiding his scarred face since she rescued him, the shy boy, and the End catches the Boss looking proudly out at her team and does his disgusting pop-eye trick right back at her, with an approving leer.

"Get that somewhere safe," she tells the End, nodding to the bag of catnip that's still mostly intact and has a few yarn mice left in it. He nods back, understanding the delegation; a sniper's eye on all the players in an unfolding situation will catch the same things as a battle commander--and a mother. The obvious concern right now, with the Fury freed from the arms of love and Tristan happily drooling down her collar, is the speculative look Adam is trying to hide.

It's easy to get Tristan from the ground into a fireman's carry. Her man isn't fighting anything that gets him closer to his Boss; draping him over her shoulders nets her an ocelot-skin shawl that's very helpful about holding on, although there's a telltale squirming where one of her shoulders hits his crotch, and it keeps going longer than it'd take to get his balance.

"You'd better save some of that for me, soldier," she warns him, not unkindly. Given his custom voicebox, it isn't easy getting an answer from Tristan when they aren't face to face, but the arm in front of her is the one that he releases long enough to salute, and she appreciates the gesture. 

Muscle, bone, and ghosts, Tristan is the physically lightest member of her Cobra Unit, and he's definitely the one whom the Boss is happiest to be dragging back to her lair. From the purring that's going on behind her back, Tristan wouldn't prefer to be back in the arms of the Fury, either.

"This reminds me of our first night together," the Boss notes on their threshold, which is all the warning Tristan is going to get before she converts her carry into a slam, right onto their marital bed. He takes it well, and jackknifes himself over to one side so that there's room for her to join him.

In the dim light, Tristan signs that the Boss has gotten no less beautiful over the years, her arms carrying him to bed are no less strong, and how glad he is that this time, he didn't start out chained to the floor by an over-anxious Risk Management team in a top secret laboratory. The Pain getting Tristan tipsy is _nothing_ compared to a lifetime of being shot up with industrial grade abomination-of-science tranquilizers, he tells her, and hopes she won't be too harsh when the Pain dares to show his face around camp again. He didn't mean to get Tristan lost in his own forced-open mind.

"Hmm," the Boss says, her pants off and shirt quickly following. "You'll have to convince me. But I'm already looking forward to your argument."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter titles are from a period-appropriate [piece of exonumia,](https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces135844.html) exactly the sort of thing that my off-duty Pain would proudly give the Boss as an anniversary present.


End file.
